178: Lindsey Lockett: Stop Chasing Calm, It's Keeping You Stuck

Woke up to my hamster wheel in a psych hospital. I attempted suicide March 7th, 2019. When you go to the psych hospital, you don't get to bring your supplements, bone broth, and all the things with you that you think you need to be well. Then I was in there for five days and I realized I was eating food and I wasn't feeling worse. I don't have to take $400 worth of supplements every month. And the thing that was sick inside of me wasn't because of things outside of me. It was because of things inside of me. Calm is not the only appropriate expression or state to be in. Calm is one configuration of nervous system. You need less nervous system tools, the more you're feeling your feelings. What we really need is resolution. Because if we keep going back to the tool for relief, that's kind of like going back to the alcohol for relief. So here's the thing. No one is coming to turn you on. Not your husband, not the right mood, not the right moment, not good Whether, contrary to popular belief, turn on is a skill. It's not something that just happens to you. It's something you can actually learn. And when you do, you live in a world of yes, of possibilities and of sweetness. If you'd rather scroll or watch TV than make love, if you feel like you have to try hard to be sexy and plan lovemaking for it to be exciting, if you think low libido is just part of perimenopause, if you judge or resent other women and have grown a bit bitter, then my free turn-on training with a very special guest is for you. We'll cover the real reason that desire disappears in long-term relationships, the four turn-on myths that are keeping women tense and pleasure-starved, and the simple skills to reconnect to desire on your own terms. No therapy, no retreats, no performative theatrics required. Claim a limited spot at kellybroganmd.com forward slash turn on. So I'm in my gifts and receiving era and I want to share the abundance by gifting one of you lovelies each week a free beauty backroom peptide perfecting complex face serum or moisturizer. Here's what you do. You drop a celebration blast in the comments across any of the platforms. Something you're excited about, proud of or loving about yourself. And you start it with the phrase, my blast. This product is all of my skincare dreams come true, so I cannot wait to get it in your hands. Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan. And today I sit down with Lindsay Lockett to talk about the nervous system and why maybe we don't want to be regulating it. I caught her on Instagram and immediately saw another disruptor in this woman. And she has many, many important hot takes. Because I think in so many ways, we've lost the plot when it comes to what it is to actually heal the nervous system, what that looks like, what the practices actually encompass, and how we can end up on the hamster wheel of healing if we don't start interrogating what we're actually doing. So we also talk about, for example, what I'm working on with a guy who's flirting with me at the gym when it comes to nervous system capacity. And importantly, what it actually means to speak your truth. What actually is your truth? How do you know that you are dealing with your truth? And what does it look like to express that with authenticity so that you are not actually expressing your victimization and calling it your truth? I think this is a really important conversation and I hope that it is immediately helpful to you. Like it actually changes how you move through your day today. Welcome Lindsay to the show. Hi Kelly. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's so, so fun to connect. And I already feel such a vibe with you. I am not a big Instagram. I'm not an Instagram scroller, period. I don't scroll on Instagram. Well, I'm more, I'm a TikTok girl. Okay. So I, I'm very passionate because I used to be, you know, a conspiracy theorist hater of all platforms. And now I get so much enjoyment and edification and like feel the generous heart of humanity on this, on this platform. It's very humbling anyway. but I don't, for whatever reason, scroll on Instagram. So when I do notice something, you know, like I'm going in there to see what my daughter sent me in DMs or whatever, it's not to be too mystical about it, but it's always meaningful. And your post, I don't know, it must have been a few months ago at this point, caught my eye. And I don't read carousels. Like that's just, there's just many reasons why it's enigmatic to me that I stopped and read the entire thing. And I want to get into it. We have so much to talk about. I want to get into it because you are clearly a woman of inquiry, shall I say. And I recognize that, right? Like I recognize somebody who is questioning paradigms, who is, you know, thinking deeply. And you have a lot to say about what we're calling nervous system regulation and the fetishizing of calm. I mean, I have offers in my own stable with that word and I do occasionally use the word regulation. And I know that you are onto something very powerful and probably more than onto it, that you practice it and teach it and support women in this realm. And so I want to, yeah, push the envelope together with you, encourage you to push the envelope. And, you know, before we get into all that, I have learned a bit about your work. And really, occasionally, I'll invite somebody on this show just so that I can fucking talk to them. And that's the greatest part about a podcast. It's like, I just get to like, have a chat that y'all can listen in on. And this is one of those moments. Because a lot of times I, you know, I showcase my nearest and dearest who potentially don't have huge audiences. And it's just so pleasurable for me to like put them, push them up on the stage in the spotlight. And in this case, I really just want to get to know you and your work. And I know that the women, specifically women listening, that they are here for a grounded clarification around our goals as embodied women and some of the kind of shiny objects that are potentially out there distracting from the relational safety that is possible for us and what it takes to get there. And this has been a huge focus of my work the past couple of years. So having your perspective is fascinating. So I want to start off talking a bit about the concept of authenticity, which is one that I have myself a lot to say about. And these words, sometimes they go through their own arc, right? Like they're relatively unknown, then they get hyper-saturated and then they sort of like lose their je ne sais quoi. And authenticity maybe in that cycle sort of towards the end of it. But before we do that, I want to talk about like the hamster wheel of healing because I bet you've been on it. Right. And, you know, I bet so many women listening have been on it. And so can we just like start there when you're at this point in your life where you have been chasing the healing, doing the work for so many years, and you are potentially not able to say without qualifications that your life is actually any better, that you are actually any more joyful, that you have actually more pleasure, connection, and intimacy. And I am guessing that that birthed a lot of your current body of work was that moment of realizing whatever the hell you were up to, you know, up into the point took you somewhere, but it wasn't home. So yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit about your hamster wheel. Yeah. Well, I woke up to my hamster wheel in the psych hospital. There we go. In the deep end of the pool. Let's go. I'm your girl for this topic. Yeah. So in 2019 was my dark night of the soul, I guess you call it. And for about 10 years prior to that, I had been very heavily into health and wellness culture. I was like a Weston A. Price traditional food girly. Still am. Still love my bone broth and my raw milk and all the things. I've got it in my fridge right now. But yeah, I was on this chasing a symptom and then I would hear about something and someone would be like, oh, you should try Chinese medicine for that. So off to the Chinese medicine doctor I go. And then another symptom comes up. Oh, you should take this supplement for that. So on Amazon, I am. Order the supplement. Start taking it. Right? And then it's like, I just sort of like hopped from thing to thing to thing. Like, oh, this is what they're telling me I need to be well. I'll do that. This is what they're telling me to be well. I'll do that. Stealth pathogens? Absolutely. Let's go for it. Like, I probably don't have Lyme, but let's pretend like I do. You know what I'm saying? Just like, I needed an answer to explain what was wrong with me. And the health and wellness hamster wheel offered me what felt like a safer paradigm that wasn't mainstream medicine, that wasn't like go to the doctor and get a prescription, right? So like, it was like, okay, I'm way more interested in a paradigm that has options and that seems to have more respect for my body as it is, that it probably doesn't need to be like chemically regulated or, you know, medicated out of whatever symptom. And then I went, attempted suicide, March 7th, 2019, checked myself in the psych hospital. When you go to the psych hospital, you don't get to bring your supplements and your bone broth and your raw milk and all the things with you that you think you need to be well. You're eating hospital food. You're kind of at the mercy of whatever is there. You don't have your supplements. You don't have your infrared light. You don't have your sauna. You don't have like all the things. And so I was really scared about that going into the psych hospital where I was like, I'm not going to have any control over what I eat. What if I have like gluten? What if I have like, you know, and then I was in there for like five days. And I realized over the course of the five days, I was eating like shit food. And I wasn't feeling worse. And so I got out and I just had this like, light bulb moment where I was like, Oh my God, if all that stuff was what I had needed to be well, I would be well, because I have done it the best for 10 years. I raised my babies on kombucha and raw milk, dude. You know what I'm saying? So that was like, I didn't know what to do with that. But having that sort of awakening where it was like the blinders came off my eyes and I was like, clearly this is not what I needed. I thought I did, but it's not what I needed. So that's when I checked myself out of the psych hospital. I got stable. I was on some meds for a while. And then I was like, I do not want to be on these meds forever. I lived my life without meds before. I'm going to figure out how to live my life without meds again. I'm thankful I have them as a crutch. If you break your leg and you need crutches, nobody's going to shame you for needing crutches for a broken leg. Had a little bit of a broken psyche, needed a little help with that, but didn't want to be on the psych meds forever. And so I was like, I have to figure out what I need to be well, but it's not this. And I'm a 1-3 in human design. It's the fuck around, find out profile. I'm also a projector. So I'm meant to like go dive deep in something that interests me, fucking learn everything I can about it, apply it, come out on the other side with an embodied experience of like, hey, this works, you know? So that's when I dove into like the nervous system. The first trauma book I read was The Body Keeps the Score. I didn't love it super a lot. But then I read this book, Complex PTSD from Surviving to Thriving. And I was like, this guy knows my life story. He's explained every experience I've ever had. He's given me words I've never had before. And that led me down all these different rabbit trails into like learning the nervous system. And then I was like, now I have to learn polyvagal theory because that's the framework that explains all of this. And now I have to learn about this and now I have to learn about energy and now I have to learn about awakening and spirituality and oneness and beingness. And like, I just, it just was like a blooming flower, but it bloomed so fast. And yeah. And that's when I was like, now I don't have to be so strict about my freaking diet. and I don't have to take $400 worth of supplements every month. And like, I don't need all of these outside things to be well, because the thing that was sick inside of me wasn't because of things outside of me. It was because of things inside of me. Yeah. I wonder about your perspective on, you know, we could call it mindset. We could call it consciousness. I've often referred to it as consciousness, for lack of another term, you know, and the realm of victim consciousness that can follow you to all sorts of places, right? So like, you know, Alan Watts used to say that, and he was talking about the ego, but there's a lot of overlap conceptually, right? He used to say it's like, you know, a thief in the night, right? So like the cop cars are coming in the ground floor and he's just going up one floor, going up one floor, going up one floor, getting to the roof, and that we have this slippery attachment to whatever we get out of that victim triangle and that we can bring that into a greenwashed version of allopathic medicine. You went to the hospital, you secured a label. I'm sure like so many women I've ever talked to on some level that felt validating. Like, oh, you see, I fucking knew something was wrong with me, right? Kind of a thing. And then you take that consciousness of your fractured self, like you against the bad parts of you, right? You against the diagnosis, the you that will eventually transcend the diagnosis, you know, beat it. In the cancer world, that's always the language, right? And you just bring that into your supplements and your practices and your vigilant attachment to all of this outsourced thing. But in the end, the problem probably feels bigger than you still, right? Which is the child psychological signature, right? Like the thing just feels so big and you feel dependent, sometimes helpless, sometimes powerless, right? So we can cook that up and all sorts of, especially with food, we can get so neurotic and orthorexic and yeah, it's very real. I mean, I've had my own journey over the years, probably 15 years, softening and I would say maturing, you know, these food rules and food concepts. So when you had this big opening and all of these different resources were pouring in, would you say that what you learned about the nervous system did in fact also speak to, or not speak to, that it did also support this sense that there's a bigger problem that you may or may not be able to tackle and get going. you know, going on managing it. I don't know. Because I experienced some of that myself. And it can also happen when we like fetishize our trauma and then we just feel fucked up and broken again. You know, it's just that we have more understanding of how. And there's still this sense of being trapped and stuck in the victim, in the poor me, no fair, I hate this, I'm damaged. And I would say, you know, sort of the signature mantra for a lot of women consciously or subconsciously is I'm crazy, you know, right? So yeah how did you start to make the shift into like taking radical responsibility understanding what safety actually means to you That is such a great question And I am going to try my best to answer it but it going to require me to go back to what you were saying before about like how do we get into this victim consciousness And did nervous system work help you out of that in some way Or at first, nervous system work, no, did not help me out of the victim consciousness because I was viewing nervous system regulation as, oh, so the goal is, is I'm going to get to a place where I'm not triggered anymore. I like know how to be calm all the time. I can face anything with this sort of like, you know, I'm unfuckwithable or whatever. Like that's what nervous system regulation is going to do for me. But to go back to the hamster wheel of healing, that hamster, I was only on that hamster wheel because I had been on a similar hamster wheel for my entire life. And that was the hamster wheel of pursuit of my mother. And so I pursued her to get relief from her withdrawing her love and affection and attunement from me. She was a withdrawer. So she created a pursuer-withdrawer dynamic that I couldn't consent to as a child. So when I got into health and wellness, the ideal of perfect gut health and perfect skin and perfect sleep and perfect hair and perfect periods and perfect everything was now another ideal to pursue. It was like, oh, this is what I need to feel connected. This is what I'm going to do to feel better. And then whenever I went to the psych hospital and was like, oh shit, the things I thought I needed to be well did not make me well. And then I started learning about the nervous system and complex trauma and all the things. Then I was in pursuit of healing, which was regulation and calm. So it was like, I just hopped from thing to thing to thing to chase because at the core, my nervous system is programmed that when something feels out of my reach or when something is there, like health or like co-regulated relationship or my mother or money or whatever, if it's there and then it goes away, my nervous system uses the go away as like, oh, Chase, go get it. Like go after it. And the going after it isn't like, I'm a bad bitch and I meet all my fucking goals. It's not that. It's like a go after it. Like, because if we don't get it back, we're going to die. It's like that. And I used nervous system regulation for about a year, pretty successfully, to avoid confronting that pursuit part of me. Because that pursuit part of me felt abandoned by my mother first, but that programmed my whole body that anytime I have something and then I don't have it, that I've been abandoned programming kicks in, which kicks in for me to go chase it back and get it back to feel safe again. So if I hadn't learned that regulating my nervous system, if we're talking about regulation in the sense that things that are regulated are controlled, then big fat no for me. If that's what nervous system regulation means. If it means you need to get under control, your emotions are too much, not interested. And untangling calm from nervous system work has been a matter of being back in touch with my animal body and knowing that the animal body doesn't give a shit about my authentic self. My animal body doesn't give a shit about my goals, my dreams, what kind of relationships I want. My expression doesn't give a shit about any of that. It only cares about my safety and survival. And it found that pursuit sometimes worked. It sometimes got her back. My authentic self on the other, or my soul body is not my authentic self. The soul body, which is the consciousness that you're talking to, I call it a soul body. So it's like, this is the part of me that is infinite and eternal, that came from the place that all consciousness and souls come from. It came straight from the source. And what a fucking miracle that it picked this meat suit to express itself through. You know what I mean? Like what a fucking miracle that of all the bodies they could have chosen, it chose this body and it said, with this body, I want to fully express in limitless ways and have a whole human experience. but the animal body with is like what the fuck we're gonna have a limitless human experience all those experiences are scary like no we're not you know and so for me like the journey into authenticity outside of it being a buzzword is authenticity is like the alchemy the alchemical gold that is formed when the animal body and the soul body like weave back together and integrate back together so that that limitless expression can come through the animal body. But the animal body also isn't like spiritually bypassed in the name of expression. It's like, no, I'm still going to honor my animal body. I just don't want my animal body calling the shots all the time. You know? Absolutely. I don't know if that answered your question or not. I mean, so, so perfectly that I'm not even sure the question would make sense to many other people. right so i really yeah i really get it and and i i love i've heard you define authenticity in a lot of different ways i love this idea that it's it's also these dimensions of self sort of like enjoining right they're developing a relationship and awareness and connection that is sometimes otherwise fragmented and at odds right it's like that the inner war is the only war kind of framework. So I've heard you say that authenticity is quite disruptive to relationships. And I have to tell a funny personal story to sort of tee you up because I know you have a lot to share in the subject and I really appreciate it. So back in 2013, 2014, I did a Kundalini Yoga teacher training. And actually, as I've learned more about your work, I think a lot about Kundalini because a lot of people, I don't know if you've ever practiced or gotten involved, but okay. So culturally, there are a lot of, and I for sure put this in quotes, addicts who are attracted to Kundalini yoga and meditation as a healing modality. And there are like 12-step meetings always in, or it used to be anyway, in the yoga centers. And you can absolutely have, in minutes actually, a transcendent, literal out-of-body experience through the technology of your own breath movement, these sort of complex mantras. And anyway, it's a very powerful, it's actually a foundational piece of my own health protocol, because in three minutes, you can have a powerful experience. Now, when we use even something as simple as left nostril breathing or let alone any supplement, you know, your L-theanine or whatever, when we are engaging it for relief, it doesn't make it worse. Like I have gotten so fucking judgment-free in my old age. Like I literally almost have no opinions on anything. It doesn't make it worse. It's just that if you don't see that it's a lateral move, it can be difficult to assess your relationship to it. Like why are you even doing it? And is it what you want to be doing? Do you think it's just the healthy thing, spiritual thing to do? You know, that kind of thing. But there's, so anyway, when I was getting trained, I would often see like, wow, we're all here because we don't want to feel the bad shit. That's literally why everybody is in this room. And maybe there's like the odd person who just wants to feel enlightened, you know, and connect to God and, you know, work through their body in that way. But most of us feel a lot of bad shit. We have a limited capacity to hold it in the system. And here is a way to feel very different very quickly. Okay. So anyway, I did this teacher training and I was assigned a spiritual name. And the spiritual name I was assigned means bringer of harmony. Okay. My entire life imploded with a match that I lit in 2014. Okay. And I will never forget that my eldest, who is, who's basically been like a 35 year old woman since she was born. I don't know. She's just always been this person. She got really into Kundalini Yoga just independently. She wrote books about Yogi Bhajan. I don't know if it's some past life shit or whatever. But anyway, she was really into it. She paid a lot of attention to what I was doing. And when I told her about this, she looks at me, she was like, I don't know, four or five. I don't have to do the math. And she looks at me and she goes, Mama, that is not you. Okay, bringer of harmony, right? Because I was, you know, a certified chaos queen, like drama addict for many, many years, you know, to follow. So I say all of that because what I now see as the arc of my individuation process, right? And more and more transparency, honesty, and actual truth telling, because I was already an activist at that point. And a lot of people are like, oh, you're so courageous. You know, speak truth to power. Now, the courage that I've brought to actual relational authenticity, and I'll start to use the word, I would say began around that stage in my life. And it was disruptive is not even the word, right? And there's so many ways now looking back that I also didn't have the capacity to bring grace, like actual grace to these decisions. And so that's why I think it's funny because like my authenticity was extraordinarily disruptive and I still choose to believe that it's harmonizing ultimately, right? Like that I am the bringer of harmony ultimately, right? And so there is something in what you say about authenticity that I want to double click on because I still am working on this. literally how many years later, which is that, so you become aware of your truth, whatever that means to you. And maybe you say it, right? In a dynamic. And you have the courage to say it. And it'd be great if you can say it with an open heart and with a sense of connection, right? That's great. Not always available. And then there is this, what I would call like an interstitial space, right? There's this pregnant void between that bomb, maybe in my case, and the next thing that happens in the unfoldment, right? And in that space is the potential total existential dissolution of who you have needed to be in the eyes of others. Like literally, to say you could be misunderstood if you don't keep talking is an understatement, right? But then you also feel the other person's disturbance around whatever it is that you've shared. And that caretaker comes online and wants to make sure that they don't feel the thing. So you don't have to feel the thing about what they're feeling. Oh my God. If we just worked on this, we would have intimate relationships in our life in a few months. So I want to just sort of tee you up with that because navigating the moment after the honesty, like I've just never heard anybody talk about that. And I know firsthand that that is an exquisite, you know, it seems only available to the mature system. I'll just put it that way. Right. And requires a lot of slowing down and a lot of capacity that isn't, as you know, something you just decide to have one day, right? Like it's, it's almost developmental. So I'd love to just hear what you have to say about this concept of authenticity, how it can be divinely disruptive and how also, and then I'll shut up, I promise, how also, because I loved hearing you say this, it's so fucking refreshing. It's not like, I have boundaries now. I'm going to like tell it like it is and I finally feel like I can just, you know, be who I am, right? Like all of that. Oh my goodness. No, ladies, no. No. Yeah. So what is it instead? Yeah. Well, that space that you're describing, that pregnant pause, love that word, that's the space of tension, right? And you have to be in a body with a lot of capacity because the soul self, the soul body is like, what I've just expressed here is my truth. It's fine. But the animal body is not used to expressing that truth. The animal body is used to like I swallow my truth so they don't have to feel something. Or I modulate it just a little bit and take the edge off so they don't have to feel something. Or if they respond in some sort of negative way, it must mean I said the wrong thing, right? So there's like all these reasons to question and doubt the self because of the animal body's experience of what's happening, right? Like the soul body is like, dude, this is fine. The animal body is like, panic. What if we're going to lose the relationship? And so it is disturbing in relationship. Authenticity is disturbing anywhere because the authentic self, the integration of the soul body and the animal body has limitless expressions. And you're absolutely right. If somebody's walking around going, I'm just going to be my authentic self and I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks. Like that is ego, dude. That's a big fat ego trip. And you need to look at that because I don't think that authenticity cares what everyone thinks. But I think that authenticity and integrity are linked. And if you're not in integrity in your relationships and you have to excuse yourself by being like, well, it's just my authentic self and I don't care what you think, then like, that's not a relational way of being. Good luck. You know what I'm saying? And that in itself is a victim consciousness because it's like, what if my truth doesn't land well with someone? Can I still hold that tension? Can I still move through that tension with intention, right? And so authenticity is embodied allegiance to yourself under pressure. Like you're in the fucking pressure cooker of that moment of their facial expression, of their silence, of their shutdown, of their anger, of whatever, are you still going to be allegiant to yourself? Are you still going to have your own back? Not in a like, fuck you kind of way, but in a like, I am staying with myself. I'm staying with you too. I'm in this with you, but I'm not abandoning this so that you can feel better. That is hard especially for female bodies That is hard So if you already familiar with holistic approaches to your health then why would you rely exclusively on allopathic approaches to your money Like if you need more growth, then the conventional advisor puts you in a riskier fund. If your taxes are too high, then you get basic normie deferral and offsetting strategies. We need a more holistic approach to financial planning, One that considers liquidity, stability, taxes, legacy, and your actual nervous system. So you've obviously heard about diversifying investments and saving for the future, but what about becoming your own bank? So you're not forced into high interest loans or difficult decisions about whether to sell off an asset when you need access to your money. As a single woman and mother, my whole system exhaled when I learned about the specific kind whole life insurance policy that my now friends Josh and Ken offer. And yes, in a world of scammers, these are real deal humans. I've met them in person. I've worked with them myself for several years and they go above and beyond. They're totally salt of the earth people. So as I was saying, when properly structured and funded, these policies allow you to borrow against your available cash value while the policy itself continues growing according to its terms. As far as I know, it's the only asset like that of its kind. I've liquidated gold, crypto, and annuity. And those assets, when you access them, disappear. And even though I've borrowed from my whole life insurance policy, it's still growing as if I didn't. I've now referred hundreds of people to them and have heard the same enthusiastic feedback again and again. I'm pretty skilled at attracting sleeper resources that are game changing. So I am delighted to put you on. schedule a free call with them at kellybroganmd.com forward slash hole w-h-o-l-e i mean i could tell just like because i'm an example girl and i'm going to ask you for a few about what truth actually means right but i'm going to first tell a quick story that i'm literally navigating in this in my life in this moment you know whatever it is like over a decade after that other story I just told you, which is that... Okay, so first of all, I'll say I interviewed Busy Gold on the podcast recently, and she has this very fascinating metric that allows you to understand better your patterns, right? And even through that, I understood like, wow, because I can be like, I can cut a bitch, okay? I can... I'm from New Jersey. I'm Irish-Italian. I can fuck you up with my words in like two seconds, which is also, I think, like the feminine shadow on fleek, right? Like it's, that's what we can do. And I really only can access that if I feel disempowered, meaning that I feel like I am up against something that I actually perceive as more powerful than me. And that's why I've been an effective activist, right? Because in the end, I really felt in those days, government or whatever, you know, big power, I really did feel it like the bad mommy daddy, right? Like I really did feel it bigger than me. Because when I feel in a position of power, it's extraordinarily difficult for me to access a boundary. Okay. So I'm at the gym and I'm sort of, I don't know, have like a little bit of like flirty, smiley, eye contacty thing with this like super handsome guy. Okay. Whatever. and it's like, I don't know, four or five times. And finally, it just comes to me like what to say, how to like drop the handkerchief. And I actually go up to him and I sort of like say a funny thing and we are in banter. Anyway, long freaking story short, I find out after like directly asking, because personally, like here's a PSA people, if you are married and you do not wear a wedding ring to the gym, you're cheating. Okay, the end. You're hurting here first. No, I'm like, only kind of kidding. Like, get a rubber one. I don't know. But anyway, no wedding band. And so he's married. The end. Okay. So then, like literally the end. I gracefully exited the conversation. So then later, like another gym session later, bro comes up to me to like chat with me and yeah, as my kids say, I'm pretty rizzy. And he, I literally couldn't access. It's like embarrassing. I literally couldn't access the part of me that is like, please never talk to me again. Like we have no reason to, and not like bitter, but like we've no reason to talk actually ever again. Okay. So, and I literally couldn't ask. So I had, I don't know, maybe a five minute like, oh yeah, you know, kind of conversation because you could say, exactly. Yeah. I was in, you know, freeze fawn continuum. And so I'm processing with my girlfriends later and I'm like, okay, now I know next time he talks to me, I know what I'm going to say. You know, I'm going to say, I'm going to, I'm going to say, listen, married guy. Oh, and I thought you were single. It was a fun idea to talk to you. And now like, you know, stay away kind of a thing. Yeah. And I say all of this because if he approaches me again, I need to navigate with slowness my first response and really break the cycle of the reflexive, people-pleasing, appeasing fawn, right? Because if he's like, hey, how was your weekend? And that is my opportunity. But unless I can let that sit and hang for just three seconds, four seconds, and interrupt the, oh, it was great, whatever that, yeah, then I have self-abandoned yet again. And the awareness of self-abandonment is so fucking excruciating. It's such a painful place to live when you're under-practiced, under-resourced, under-skilled, or you're in the process. And so it can be that mundane, let alone in an actual relationship, right? Like romantic relationship, marriage, or as a mother, when you can allow it to hang complicated, weird, heavy, awkward for just a few seconds, right? You can gain that orientation. And you talk about the capacity. So what do you think is, what am I missing? No, like what, right? Like what is the capacity, the generator of the capacity to allow that moment so that you can orient yourself? And I'm also like a very fast, like, you know, my best friend, yeah, my best friend Tara is like, she's naturally like this. She's just like, she's a languid, sort of like amazing listener. She takes it slow. She responds slowly. And sometimes that's uncomfortable for me. We've even processed that, right? So yeah, I'd love to sort of hear what you have to say about like, which I know you have an entire program for it. So like growing your capacity to stay self-allegiant. Yes. Yes. Okay. So I think we have to rewind all the way back to like probably sometime in your childhood. And there may not be anything that like you can think of as a specific incident or a specific pattern that was alive. It literally could just be that you grew up, I'm guessing in the US, conditioned female in a female body with all of the weird patriarchal training that comes with that. And so I can imagine that at some time in your life, self-abandonment was the safest thing your animal body could do for you. And so abandoning yourself to avoid the threat of what might happen if you don't engage with this male felt better than the terror, the fear, the anxiety of what might happen if you rejected this man, a man, any man. And I would refine it to say, if I don't make sure he's comfortable, right? Because a lot of women, especially in my generation, have grown up with the belief that I can handle the emotions on your behalf. Yes. Yeah. And that's also trained into us, right? We are trained, like, don't let anyone have a negative experience of you. God forbid, God forbid anyone have a negative experience of you. So that training kicked in. Your conscious mind wasn't like, now this guy can't have a negative experience of me. So I'm just going to entertain this, right? It was your animal body that was not aligned with the soul body that wanted to be like, fuck off. Stop talking to me, right? But like the animal body took over and it does because it perceived in that moment, freeze fawn, abandoning myself, engaging with this guy is safer than not, than leaving that pregnant pause and finding and orienting to myself within that and then speaking from truth. But I think what's really powerful is that you have the experience of self-abandonment and fawn freeze and all of that. And I hope that you didn't walk away from that with too much shame because when we like set out to be like, okay, I'm going to break this pattern. I'm done making men feel better for talking to me when my truth is actually get the fuck away from me. I'm not interested in talking to you. Right? So like the fact that you even have that awareness is amazing. And the fact that you can spot the moment in that conversation with him where your body took over and your soul self is like, what the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? Yeah, it's like, you know, and maybe you feel shame about that after. I don't know. But for me, when I feel shame about something like that, that is 100% my animal body and my soul being like, hey, that wasn't an integrity for us. Right? It wasn't an integrity for you to abandon yourself to give this guy the attention that he was trying to get from you. But thank fucking God you had that experience. Because now even your imagination. Your nervous system has exposure to the idea that should this happen again with this guy or someone else, I am now aware of how easy it is for me to abandon myself, how effortless it is to abandon myself, right? The survival pattern is easier. And I don't want to do that. So I have to practice being in those situations and learning how to be allegiant to myself, even if I risk that guy thinking I'm a bitch or whatever, which they usually do, right? Because a woman who doesn't comply and entertain what a male wants is automatically a bitch. So I think the universe, when we uncover something like this, and we're like, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to start speaking my truth in these moments. The universe is like, hold my beer. And then all of a sudden, every guy at the gym comes up to you. And every guy at the grocery store comes up to you. And every person you don't want to talk to comes up to you because the universe is like, are you serious about it? Are you serious? You don't want to abandon yourself anymore? Okay. This is how you stop abandoning yourself. And what most people do is they want to avoid the discomfort of that. So they make themselves a victim. And then the story becomes, well, I can't put myself out there. Or I just won't go to the gym anymore because it's not a safe space for me. you know what I'm saying? Safe space. I fucking hate the conversation, Ember, that I feel unsafe is. Yeah. That's somebody else's responsibility. But the capacity for that, right? Even imagining it in your imagination can build capacity because I don't know if you've had this experience, but every person I've ever known, when I'm like, imagine something terrible happens to your child. As soon as they imagine that, body has an experience. They feel an electric pulse in their body. Their stomach drops. Their hands get sweaty, right? Just from imagining something that hasn't happened yet. So you can even build the capacity if you don't have the capacity to like be face to face with that situation in your imagination, like replaying it again, like a movie and finding the moment where your body chose self abandonment over self allegiance. And like, that's where your pauses, your pauses right before the moment the body goes, self abandonment is the only option we have. and you can create that pause in your imagination. You can rehearse it in the mirror. You can rehearse it with a man who feels safe to you. And then eventually you'll be able to do it at the gym or wherever else with men who want your attention and you're not interested. Yeah. Yeah, I do most of my relational practicing with my kids. Yeah, it actually has been, you know, the template for actual intimacy in my life. And so I want to talk about this concept of speaking your truth, which obviously is important to contextualize in different kinds of dynamics, right? Some stranger at the gym versus your child versus your lover versus your parents. I think there's a lot of bandying about of that phrase, you know, speak your truth and be who you are and whatever all that means to any, literally what does that mean? And I am of the belief that speaking your truth is often going to be as simple as talking about how you feel, right? And rarely is going to be a narrative about what you're observing in another person's behavior. So I wonder if you can help the gals listening better understand when they're in a position to be honest about something versus when they are really entrenching themselves in the victim role. and it seems like an important thing to do is to tell somebody else about what they're experiencing, right? Because it's a very different thing to practice this like pregnant pause capacity when you've decided that speaking your truth means that you're going to sit your husband down and tell him once and for all what a fucking asshole he is, you know, versus I have been playing this nice girl part. And I have been smiling and laughing when I've felt really hurt that you tease me or whatever, you know, making something up. How can we better understand when we have a truth to tell? And what does it sound like and look like to, you know, engage that relationally? So I think that the answer to your question is discernment. And discernment is the place from which authenticity emerges. Integrity also emerges from that place as well. So I think that if a woman is like, I'm just going to speak my truth and you did this and you did this and you did this, I would ask her to ask herself, like, am I discerning that this is what wants to come through me right now? And is it an integrity for me? Or perhaps am I discerning that I'm looking for like an emotional release I looking for like a place to dump this energy that I don know what to do with Right Part of authenticity is being able to self and not leak your energy all over the place And I think when we like just be yourself and speak your truth we can get really caught up in like, it leaks energy onto other people, right? And then it makes them directly or indirectly responsible for what to do with that energy that they didn't consent to holding. So I think that when animal body takes over, survival is fast. It's black and white. We have two choices, life, death. Body is always going to default to whatever we need to do to keep you alive. That's what we're going to do. So it does some crazy, clever, creative shit sometimes like self-abandonment, which is a genius strategy. It's so brilliant that the body does that because it works. But now what you're discerning is self-abandonment sucks and it's not working for me the way that it used to work for me anymore. And also, is it an integrity for me to abandon myself? I hope the answer is no. I hope everyone listening, your answer is no to that. And so that's where that comes from is like the pause is still so important because even when the nervous system is on fire and your body is screaming at you and there's another person in the room, which like amplifies the pressure, right? Because now we've got like two nervous systems and our nervous systems might be like at war with each other or they might be dissonant with each other or whatever. And my only responsibility in that moment is to remain in coherence with myself. And that means whatever my inner truth is, it's expressed outwardly. But inner truth discerned. and filtered through integrity. That's the place to express from. And that takes a lot of practice because nervous system energy is often really, really fast. And so we have to learn how to hit our own break in the body, either with breath or some sort of embodiment touch point, feeling feet on the floor, asking for a moment, like whatever, because we need space to locate discernment and integrity in the midst of animal body being like, fucking run or fucking self-abandon or fucking tell them off or, you know, give them a piece of your mind or whatever. Now, I have Mars and Gemini, dude. Like I am a sacred disruptor with my communication. Okay. I can rip someone a new asshole with my communication. And I love that about myself. I love it. And I can honestly say that there are times when I know that I have hurt someone with my words, but I have come from a place of truth and integrity, even if what I said was spicy. And this is tangential to why calm is not the only appropriate expression or state to be in. Calm is one configuration of nervous system. One. Very limited. We have a whole range of ways that our bodies mobilize and orient and express energy. And that's why I like to get away from polyvagal theory because I don't like the latter. I don't like the hierarchy of like ventral vagals at the top and it's the best. Because that implies in order to be your authentic self, you have to be able to access a ventral vagal state. Maybe explain what that because I've talked about polyvagal theory, but if somebody's listening in there, like what the hell are you talking about? Okay. Can you give like the elevator pitch? Yeah. In 1994, a guy named Stephen Porges, super genius, academic scientist, neuro researcher guy came up with a model for the human autonomic, the mammalian nervous system called the polyvagal theory based in like the vagus nerve. And he identified these survival states and the ways in which the nervous system automatically springs into action on our behalf. And that's where terms like fight, flight, freeze, fawn come from. He identified that we have a ventral vagal state, which he calls the safe and social state or the social engagement system. Then we have the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight-flight response. Then we have a dorsal vagal response, which is like the shutdown, the collapse response. And then there's secondary responses in there. So like when you combine fight-flight energy with the break of the dorsal vagal system, you get the secondary state of freeze. Or when you combine ventral vagal safety with movement from the sympathetic nervous system, you get the state of play or creative flow or sex. When you combine dorsal vagal shutdown with the safety of ventral vagal, that's the state of meditative stillness. So like it's all and it's all on a ladder. He used a ladder, which I think Portis is a genius. I don't think polyvagal theory has been disproven or debunked. I think that the things that they're arguing about since that article came out back in February that supposedly debunked polyvagal theory, I think what they're arguing about is like the minutiae of things and how the biology works that is literally irrelevant to the average layperson. Like I don't think that the theory should be thrown in the trash and we need to come up with something else. I personally am moving away from using it. One, because I don't think a person needs to be able to identify what state they're in to be able to do literally anything. I also don't think that identifying your state serves a purpose because it can easily put you in a victim story of like, I'm in a chronic freeze state all the time. It's like, no, you're actually not. It's biologically impossible for your nervous system to be stuck. You may not be noticing when it shifts, but it is. But what you're feeling the most of is the stuckness. but it's not possible for you to actually be stuck there. So I prefer to use the language of like, when under threat, real or perceived, nervous system mobilizes energy or immobilizes energy. We don't need to know what fucking nervous system state that is. Next, we need to orient that energy in some way. Sometimes we do that consciously. Sometimes we do it unconsciously. Sometimes it's subconscious. Sometimes it's planned. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's authentic. Sometimes it's not. But if I am mobilized with a lot of energy in my body and I'm orienting toward something, that looks like a fight response, right? The energy is there and the energy is being directed out. And then there is expression or inhibition of expression. Porges would call that the break, but I don't think that's quite... It's not quite accurate. So I'm not trying to come up with a different framework for anything. I don't think we need another model or a diagram or whatever. I just personally don't like the ladder because it implies hierarchy. And it looks like, oh, there's this state at the top. And my job to heal is to climb that ladder and get to the top and figure out how to stay there. And I know Porges didn't write that in polyvagal theory. And that's certainly not what it actually says or how it's taught. But as we were talking about these words lose their meaning, right? It's gotten so diluted and so distilled down that the actual meaning of has come to mean, oh, get to the top of the ladder and be calm all the time. And so I'm just using different language. No framework. How much energy is mobilizing? Where are you directing that energy? What are you perceiving? Because the mobilization is based on perception. So I'm perceiving Kelly's mad at me. Body mobilizes energy. I orient that energy to you and express it as what the fuck is wrong with you? You know what I'm saying? So I don't need to know what fucking state I'm in. I don't need to identify ventral angle or whatever. It's just like, oh, this is what my body's doing. How do I do that in integrity? How do I feel that mobilized energy based on my perception, orient it where I need to go and express it in integrity? So it's not about figure out a way to be less or more mobilized. It's not about figure out the perfect expression for that. It's not about orient perfectly every single time. It's based on what I'm working with right now and what my body is doing right now and what my capacity is right now. What is the most in integrity way for me to express? And when we bring it back to integrity, it's very hard to justify. I'm just speaking my truth. You know what I mean? And I don't know. I think people maybe don't... We don't think about integrity as much anymore, maybe. I don't know. I love this kind of summary of what can support authentic expression where you say it's high mobilization, meaning you're feeling the things you're feeling, right? Because a lot of us who have been largely dissociated and self-suppressed, we are numb, right? That's the greater part of my life I spent that way, right? And I looked cool, calm, and collected on the outside. So there's high mobilization, there's self-orientation, which allows you to feel what's actually happening and focus on it rather than try to organize and systematize the things going on outside of you. And then there's flexible inhibition, right? Which means that you can gauge the relational dynamic in front of you and you can either, you know, cassette or, you know, dial it down and just say, no, thank you. Right? Right? Is that what you mean by that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I also mean like, you know, women, especially because of our conditioning, we often feel the mobilized energy in our bodies and our automatic orientation is to the other person. And then our automatic expression is, how do I make this better for you? How do I make this softer for you? How do I make sure you don't have a negative experience of me? And so I'm not saying that we completely throw that out the window because I think relational integrity is whenever in relationship you honor the fact that somebody might feel some kind of way about whatever your truth is or whatever you're saying or doing and that there's space for that, right? Like I can be fully in my integrity and that could still hurt you. And I am out of integrity if you bring that hurt forward to me. And I'm like, well, it's not my problem. It's just my authenticity. Like, no, no. Like that is weaponized authenticity, right? So I think the relational orientation or the self-orientation or whatever is very context and capacity dependent on that moment. I think we have to learn how to... So I like to use a pendulum swing. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. So if where you started in your conditioning as a woman, especially, is like, I orient to other people. I orient to needing their needs. I orient to changing and modulating myself to make them feel more comfortable. I orient to over-functioning to prove my worth. I orient to others first. I think you have to have the experience of the pendulum swinging all the way over here to be like, I'm not orienting to any of you, motherfuckers. I'm orienting to myself. I'm going to figure out what this feels like first. And you need that experience, right? You need the binary, the polarity of both experiences to then equalize somewhere in the middle, which is a range. It's not a fixed point. Somewhere in the middle that says, I can orient to myself and what I need and what my integrity is, and I can orient relationally. And hopefully we can figure out how to come to something that feels good for both of us. But that's not always possible, right? Not everybody else is also walking around going, I'm going to orient relationally because that's in my integrity. A lot of people are walking around orienting to their own egos and thinking it's integrity. So yeah, the standards that it requires to be embodied in your authenticity are actually higher because you don't have anyone policing you. You are literally the sovereign authority of yourself. And the word authority and authentic have the same A-U-T-H, which means original, genuine, from the source. It's from the Greek authenticos. So you're being something original from the source. You're not like a carbon copy of something else. You're not copying and pasting someone else's formula. You can pick and choose from different things that serve you. But ultimately, it comes down to what is within my discernment and my integrity that is an expression that is original and from the source that is for me. And if it impacts someone else, I'm still here to work through that if we can. But it's not authentic for me to try to live my life without impacting anyone. Because I'm just walking around in eggshells, but calling it authenticity. Because like, oh, look, everyone's having a great experience of me. I don't want everyone to have a great experience with me. I want my authenticity to be a filter that naturally repels people who are not meant for me. Authenticity is wildly polarizing. People either love me or they hate me, Kelly. You know what I mean? I don't ever get people in between. They're like, oh yeah, she's so nice to everyone. People are like, I fucking love her or she's a fucking bitch. That's really how people feel about me. And I'm so honored about that because I would rather create that and let that be a filter instead of trying to be palatable and acceptable to everyone. But I am a person of a lot of integrity and my integrity is how I sleep at night. And when I'm not in integrity, I cannot wait to try to make it right because it feels so awful to me to be out of integrity. Yeah, I get that. Amazing, Lindsay. So how do you help women to level up in this arena. Oh my gosh. They're with us and where they can find you. Yeah, so many ways. But right now I have a crazy, stupid thing that I'm doing. It's like so stupid cheap. I'm doing a 10-day immersion with audio transmissions once a day for 10 days. It's called Animal Body, $17. Amazing. I love that. And yeah, it's a biological female-only space for women who identify with the female body and the experiences and conditioning of the female body and want a safe space to be able to get back into contact with the creature that your soul animates and how much of your life it is actually in control of and in ways that you don't choose all the time. And then that's going to lead into my bigger group initiation that's called Feel Without Fear, which is really where I teach women how to build the capacity that we're talking about and build discernment and create that pause and learn how to locate yourself inside of that and be in integrity and feel your feelings and not be afraid of your feelings. And you don't need, you need less nervous system tools the more you're feeling your feelings, like honestly. So I teach women to not need the fucking tools anymore because the tools bring relief. But what we really need is resolution because if we keep going back to the tool for relief, that's kind of like going back to the alcohol for relief or kind of like going back to kundalini yoga for relief. Right, exactly. Like whatever, right? Or the Klonopin, yeah, exactly. Yeah, or the Klonopin or whatever. And so, yeah, I teach women how to like edge their way in through like titration and pidulation of being in their truth, fucking around and finding out, seeing how it feels and being in integrity and then building the capacity to be allegiant to themselves under pressure. Amazing. Well, it's so great to have you as an ally in this space and we'll make sure you'll have to evergreen that stupid cheap offer and we'll make sure to have a link regardless of when this is airing. And I'm just so grateful to connect to you, Lindsay. No, thank you so much for having me, Kelly. you